


Where Aang Goes

by consideritalljoy



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, really just. zuko thinkin some thoughts, this was entirely an accident but it's long enough to be here so ihere it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27923440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consideritalljoy/pseuds/consideritalljoy
Summary: When Zuko hears that Aang spent some time at a Fire Nation school, he assumes the worst. He is *not* prepared to find out about the secret dance party. But, he learns, even when he was hunting the Avatar, where Aang goes, more than he follows.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	Where Aang Goes

The first time Zuko hears one of his new… travelmates (not friends—at least, not yet) mention Aang spending time at a Fire Nation school, his breath catches. He doesn’t meet anyone’s eyes and tries to gauge the mood of the room. They don’t keep talking about it, don’t throw him the glares he was expecting, and they laugh. How could they laugh?

Then again, laughing is how this bunch copes, he’s come to realize, so maybe it makes sense. 

Zuko’s never been to a public Fire Nation school, of course, so he doesn’t know exactly what Aang would have met with, but he knows enough to guess, and guess well. Fire Nation schools are renown for their strict adherence to rules and customs, and the punishments were… severe. 

He sneaks a glance back to Aang, playing with an air-marble again while Katara keeps talking, and quickly lowers his gaze again. 

Aang certainly wouldn’t have lasted long there. Zuko is certain, in that moment, that the incident ended in a daring rescue attempt as Aang was pulled away toward the nation's coal mines. He tries, and only mostly succeeds, not to shudder. 

The second time Zuko hears of this incident, it’s from Katara as she pokes fun at Sokka’s fake beard, which, Zuko finds out, was originally acquired for the purpose of impersonating a Fire Nation father. _How are any of them still alive?_ He was right though, it seems—Aang quickly got into trouble during his time at the school. It was lucky enough that no one had recognized him, but his personality was somehow even harder to conceal than the bright blue tattoos trailing all over his body. 

By this time, Zuko has taught Aang a few times, and knows firsthand how energetic the boy always is. That… that isn't Fire Nation regulation. Nor is his easy manner of making friends. If the administrators hadn’t taken issue with him first, the students would have before long. 

It must have been hell. 

The schools are where so much of his great-grandfather Sozin’s propaganda is passed to the citizens, rewriting history for generations until now, when the true history is locked away in the Fire Sage’s catacombs. His own experiences with a Fire Nation education had been hard enough, ripping away compassion at the root and replacing it with a hatred and fear of all things Other, but for Aang? 

Zuko just hopes his class hadn’t covered the Air Nomads during Aang’s time there. 

The third time Zuko hears of Aang’s time at a Fire Nation school, it’s with a mention of a girl. It seems Aang befriended her, and then her boyfriend challenged him. Aang won (of course he won, Zuko thinks—even without actually using any bending, of course he won), and that’s when the admin blamed him for the whole thing and dragged him away. The boyfriend was probably the son of one of higher-ups, Zuko thinks with a snarl. That’s how these things usually go. 

This time, it’s been a little longer, and while Zuko maybe wouldn’t call every member of this group a friend, he’s closer. “How did you escape?” he asks. 

Thus begins an evening of storytelling as the group joins together to tell him the whole thing from start to finish. It’s… it’s so far from what he’d imagined. 

Aang had thrown them a secret dance party, _and_ he’d gotten away unscathed. 

How are any of them still alive?

As he thinks about the story later, though, alone and late at night, he begins to realize. Where Aang goes, joy follows. This hadn’t been the case for him, of course—where Aang went back then, Zuko had only followed angrily. But one by one, locations come to mind. That town they’d saved from volcanic destruction, and the other they’d saved from an angry spirit. The lightheartedness Zuko had always felt in those places just before reigning down Fire Nation terror in his pursuit. 

Aang made friends easily along the way, too. Suki. This girl from the school. Aang had even tried to befriend him, so long ago, when he’d used the Blue Spirit identity to recapture the Avatar from Zhao. Aang’s spirit is light and joyful, but, Zuko realizes, it is not _fragile._ It is strong, stronger than Fire Navy steel. 

This is what his nation needs. The world, too, but, his nation. More than simply the Avatar—though of course, they all need that, and desperately—what they need is Aang. That spirit. This is the spirit that can bring peace and joy back, he thinks, as he begins to drift off. There is hope—Katara was right—there is hope because of Aang.


End file.
